Expanding a little on this post:
Most Americans realize that victory in Iraq would be good for the US. It would also be good for Republicans, who've generally supported Bush on the war. If something benefits Republicans, it hurts Democrats. Thus Democrats work for our country's defeat.
Michael Novak (sorry about the long excerpt, but I can't bring myself to include less) from 2/17/07:
In Congress, Democrats (and the occasional Republican like Nebraska’s Chuck Hagel) would fulfill the prediction of Osama bin Laden, who said that Americans would lose heart and go home. This is the road the Democrats put us on on Friday. [. . .] Once again, they have repeated their deed of 39 years ago, turning victory into defeat, setting the stage for last-minute departures by helicopter, banging with rifles the up-reached hands of friends of the United States, who are begging not to be abandoned.I thought that day that that obscene, humiliating, disgraceful departure from the United States embassy in Saigon was the most dishonorable day in American history. I still feel sick thinking about it.
That dishonor was brought about by a Congress determined to stop funding a war that had turned into its final lap toward victory. An arrogant Democratic Congress abandoned several million friends of the United States to torture, imprisonment, death. Two millions took desperate flight by sea upon open rafts or flimsy junks, to be set upon by pirates as well as pursuing foes.
Until now, I had resisted comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. The dissimilarities are immense. They are as different as night and day. Besides, the victories won and the difficulties successfully overcome in Iraq, by sheer bravery and persistence, have been of historic proportions.
But now the actions of our own Congress have made the sickening memories of that cowardly flight from Saigon come pouring back, with all their now forgotten shame and dishonor.
Will the Democratic party — of which I was once a member — never learn? Will it lurch from generation to generation turning victory into dishonor and shame? That once brave and courageous party now boasts, boasts, of gambling on American defeat. Of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Again. [. . .]
This President’s Day weekend, I can’t help but give thanks for our current one, brave and resolute, disregarding all the ugly and contemptuous vilification turned against him, firm in the knowledge that Providence favors the free.
Providence is no Pollyanna, and the good guys by no means always win. (Peek at God’s own Son on the cross). Yet I will be terribly surprised if, perhaps sooner rather than later (and for sure in the long serene light of history), this brave man’s resolution is [not] cause for national pride and celebration. The very jeers of his critics while he lived will become the measure of the valor he has shown.
Let historians look back on my words with mockery if they will. I would rather stand at this president’s side any day, than among those who for the second time bring dishonor upon this nation.
The Democrats who favor withdrawal from Iraq aren't afraid the troop surge will fail. They're afraid it'll succeed.
Spare some respect for these folks, who also deserve it:
While the stars took the stage, the musical backbone of the show — the orchestra — remained ensconced beneath it."It would be fun to be seen," said harpist Gayle Levant, who is playing her 13th Academy Awards this year. "It would be fun to have a camera come around here so we could wave and say `We're here, it's live, we're doing it.'"
The Hollywood native typically plays on movie and television scores. She called the Oscar gig "the biggest honor in the world."
Principal cellist Stephen Erdody, who's on his fourth Oscar show this year, agreed.
"It's a prestigious thing," he said. "It's fun to do this. I just wish they could see us."
The possibility exists that Rena Sofer will appear simultaneously -- I mean, in the same instant -- on both Heroes and 24. Must be interesting for her.
Kimberley Strassel looks at "the fight Senate liberals are picking with President George W. Bush over the issue of Justice Department nominations":
One big question after Democrats won the election was how they'd handle the all-important question of national security. The public's been getting a taste of that management via the Iraq debate, but the nominations flaps are equally revealing. Democrats like to say that having a robust criminal justice system is key to fighting terror, and that's true. Many Democrats (while they won't admit it) even still believe the courts are the only place to fight al Qaeda. The least they can do is show they mean it and ensure the Justice Department has the people it needs.
An editorial at Opinion Journal (I don't know whether it appeared in The Wall Street Journal):
Since the current expansion really started to cook in 2003, any number of overwrought reasons have been offered to predict that disaster was imminent: the budget deficit, energy prices, the trade deficit, the "tapped out" consumer, and so on. The economy has weathered them all.However, we finally have a threat that really does bear watching--namely, a potential credit crunch precipitated by the housing downturn and rising default rates. . . .
Typically, a housing downturn and the credit problems that accompany it are a result of underlying economic weakness, rather than their cause. The economy slows, people lose their jobs and are forced to sell under duress lest they default. The distressed selling drives prices down. But in this case, it may work the other way around.
Not my field, but if they're concerned, it's probably worth watching.
A number of seasoned observers of North Korea, including American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, estimate that, in his commerce with the world, Kim faces a shortfall of about $1 billion per year, which he makes up with criminal activities of one kind or another. Over the past dozen years, China, South Korea, and even the United States have poured billions' worth of aid into North Korea. By many accounts, much of that has ended up supporting the government rather than feeding the hungry. And none of it has swayed the basic criminal bent of Kim's regime. Instead, we have the bizarre spectacle in which U.N. agencies purport to be dishing out food and instructing North Koreans in the rudiments of development, while down the road North Koreans as part of state policy are cranking out top-quality counterfeit U.S. banknotes and tooling missile and nuclear bomb components.
David Gelernter on the Temple Mount controversy:
The Temple Mount is ruled by the Islamic authority of Jerusalem, the Waqf. The Waqf is supposed to respect the status quo and ask Israeli approval before making changes. In 1996, the Israeli government approved a Muslim request to build a large new underground mosque on the Mount. Construction began, and a request to build an "emergency exit" for the new mosque followed, and was also approved.Enormous excavations were carried out. Thousands of tons of soil and fill were scooped out and trucked away. Those trucks were filled with some of the most precious stuff in the world. The Temple Mount is potentially the most important, exciting place on earth for archaeological digs. . . .
But the Waqf has a nice, simple policy regarding archaeological digs on the Mount. Don't bother applying; none are allowed. The world's most important archaeological site is off-limits to archaeology.
Under the circumstances, those underground excavations for the new mosque and its "emergency exit" looked like a stroke of qualified good luck. (The exit turned out to be a 2,000-square-meter pit that entailed the removal of over 6,000 tons of earth.) All that indescribably precious soil was scooped out, trucked away--
And trashed. Hundreds of truckloads were unloaded in municipal garbage dumps. . . . All in all this was a sickening crime against the human spirit, a rape of the Mount. But radical Arab leaders routinely deny that a Temple ever existed in this place. They would love to annihilate every trace of Jewish history as they would love to destroy the Jews themselves. For would-be murderers, destroying truth is the next best thing to destroying life.
The moral case for stopping President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei in their tracks is that both have vowed to annihilate Israel. . . .Why, the political establishment of Europe implicitly asks, should we lift a finger for Israel? Well, Israel is Europe's orphaned offspring. It was Europe--specifically Britain--that conceived the Jewish National Home in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. It was Europe--specifically Germany, but with help from collaborators in almost every nation on the Continent--that drove hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate, and then murdered six million who could not escape. It was Europe--specifically the E.U.--that gave the Holocaust a unique status in defining the values that Europe's institutions enshrine. Generations of children have been taught that the commemoration of the Holocaust is not only a moral imperative, but constitutive of European civilization.
Now that the threat of a second Holocaust is staring Europe in the face, however, its leaders are in denial. Worse: They seem insouciant. . . .
The calumny that Israel--the most liberal and egalitarian country in the Middle East--is an "apartheid state" has hardened into a conviction. The mud has stuck.
Yet if Israel is attacked and--God forbid--destroyed by Iranian nuclear bombs, then European civilization will have perished, too. The destruction of Israel would signal the demise of the Judeo-Christian morality that ennobled Greco-Roman culture to create the only Europe that was ever worth preserving. I for one could not live in a society that could even contemplate such a second Shoah. I would turn my back on such a Europe, shake the dust from my feet, never to return.
Michael Ledeen comments,
Johnson, and others like him, are still kidding themselves about Europe. They think the appeasement of Islamic Fascism is primarily the result of the long campaign against Israel and Zionism. . . . In retrospect, we can see that Europe set on this course at the turn of the twentieth century, then indulged their antisemitic fantasies until they were defeated in war. We then had a happy interlude, when antisemitism was so discredited by Hitler and rendered taboo as a result of defeat. That interlude is now over, and the Europeans are reverting to form. The surrender of citizens’ freedoms to the state is, after all, the essence of totalitarianism, and it is no less ominous today—wrapped in the sweet words of the nanny state—than it was in the 1930s, when it was accompanied by the racist chest-pounding of the leaders of the Third Reich.Islamic antisemitism has been folded into this tradition, and European governments are all too happy to make room for their evil.
Theodore Dalrymple (7/05):
While giving people equal opportunities is impossible, giving everyone, or at least the vast majority of people, a considerable level of opportunity is not impossible. And yet, often in the very name of equality of opportunity, we have created a society many of whose members have far fewer opportunities than they could and ought to have. In the pursuit of a classless society, we are close to having produced a caste society. . . .I have often noticed, for example, that the mentally subnormal children of the middle classes are often able to read better, even much better, than the children of the working classes who are of considerably higher intelligence. The difference is not only in the parenting, but in the way that they are taught.
A memorable aside:
Incidentally, I am always astonished by the way people always suppose that, if there were any justice in the world, they would be better rather than worse off. To the contrary, many should thank their lucky stars that there is no justice in the world: for otherwise they would die in prolonged agony.
That's according to this summary of a piece in National Journal:
The more intense security operations inside Baghdad have uncovered bomb workshops and safe houses, meaning that more bombers will have to come in from the suburbs. But the suburbs are under attack as well. So desperate were the Sunni terrorists in the Baghdad suburb of Tarmiya, that they attacked an American outpost in the town. Three suicide car bombs were used, as well as dozens of gunmen. Two Americans were killed, but most of the attackers did as well, with the rest fleeing after their attack collapsed under American firepower. The Battle for Baghdad has seen dozens of these temporary American combat outposts set up, with the expectation that the terrorists would be tempted to try and overrun one of them. The failed attack at Tarmiya does nothing for terrorist morale.While most of the Battle for Baghdad has concentrated on Sunni terrorists, American and Iraqi troops were also seen surrounding and taking over the headquarters of Muqtada Al Sadr, the head of the Mahdi army (a coalition of pro-Iran Shia militias). . . . American troops were seen removing documents and other items from Sadrs headquarters.
Despite the jump in terrorist bombings in the last few days, the death toll in Baghdad, since the security operations began two weeks ago, have declined by over 70 percent. . . . Getting past checkpoints has become a major chore for Sunni terrorists, and many of them don't make it. When you hear of a suicide bombing with only one or two dead, that's usually a car bomber caught at a check point. Sometimes they take the bomber alive, which is an intelligence bonanza, as the bomb, and the bomber, can be examined at length. Also not reported are the hundreds of Sunni terrorists who get arrested at checkpoints each month. . . .
"Taking back the streets" is easy. Holding them in the long term is hard. It will take several months before it is known who won the Battle of Baghdad. It's all a matter of crime rates. If the murder rate comes down, you've won. Actually, the murder rate has come down over the last year, but not enough to become news. Eliminating the suicide car bombings would be a real victory, as these operations are largely for the media. Militarily they mean much less than the gun battles between police and terrorist (Sunni or Shia) gangs, or the raids on terrorist safe houses. At this point, the Sunni Arabs are fighting a media war. On the ground, they have lost. But until the media confirms this, they can keep it up.
And this time it's final. What decided me was a scene in which Matt (Matthew Perry) yelled at Harriet (Sarah Paulson) over the latter's opposition to gay marriage. First, I hated seeing Harriet, a sweetheart, get harangued. Second, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin gave Harriet no answer to Matt's attack—as though no intelligent reply was possible. (That's how it goes in Sorkinworld.) Finally, Harriet continued to find Matt irresistible, to the extent that when Matt later kissed her she forgot her own name. Ridiculous, contemptible television. I'm sorry I gave it so many chances. If my earlier post caused anyone to watch it, I abjectly apologize.
Happy now?
Tim Blair sums up ultimate Frisbee:
It's just like regular frisbee, except even gayer.
Michael Behar in Wired:
Godsall tells me how he got interested in trees. Nine years ago, while working as a marketing consultant in Toronto, he took on a client in the log salvage business. Wet Wood Underwater Fibre Recovery employed loggers to search riverbeds and shallow lakes for sunken timber with potential market value. Eventually, Godsall signed on with Wet Wood full-time as general manager. He soon realized that hunting for a log here and there wasn’t exactly the way to rake in the dough. It was akin to collecting soda cans for the five cent return deposit—profit margins were slim, and the work was tedious and time-consuming. Also, it could be unpopular with the public because scouring lake beds can upset ecosystems, churning up silt and debris that then threaten fish and wildlife.One day during a meeting, a client showed Godsall an image of an underwater forest at the bottom of a reservoir. “I had become so obsessed with retrieving lost logs that the picture of a whole forest of trees under-water seemed at once surreal, obscene, and too good to be true. I was convinced it was trick photography.” But the photo was genuine, and a few weeks later Godsall approached his bosses with a question: “Why are we hunting for sunken logs when there are entire forests waiting to be reclaimed?” Godsall suggested they build technology to go after all the standing underwater timber in the world. Everyone just laughed. Godsall resigned two days later, and in May 2000 he launched Triton.
Very interesting stuff.
StrategyPage presents "What Nancy Pelosi Has," "What Nancy Pelosi Wants" and "What Nancy Pelosi Should Get."
At the New York Times, no less. John Podhoretz has provided a (rough) transcript of comments by John Burns that show clarity, compassion and—rare trait—humility. Among the most important posts so far this year.
Dave Barry wrote five great columns in anticipation of the Super Bowl, and only now do I get around to posting on them. Damn.
(Reg. may be req. If so it's worth the time.)
AP:
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced a ballot measure that would require heterosexual couples to have a child within three years or have their marriages annulled.
Good idea. Perhaps the authors can next turn their attention to the oft-misused freedom of assembly:
Should a gathering fail to produce demonstrable benefit to the nation, all who attended shall be subject to arrest for loitering.
(Via Glenn Reynolds.)
